Part 15 (2/2)
The American Valley is one of the most beautiful in all California. It is seven miles long and three or four wide, with the Feather River wending its quiet way through it, unmolested by flumes and undisturbed by wing-dams. It is a superb farming country, everything growing in the greatest luxuriance. I saw turnips there which measured larger round than my waist, and all other vegetables in the same proportion. There are beautiful rides in every direction, though I was too unwell during my stay there to explore them as I wished. There is one drawback upon the beauty of these valleys, and it is one peculiar to all the scenery in this part of California, and that is, the monotonous tone of the foliage, nearly all the trees being firs. One misses that infinite variety of waving forms, and those endless shades of verdure, which make New England forest scenery so exquisitely lovely. And then that gorgeous autumnal phenomenon, witnessed, I believe, nowhere but in the Northern States of the Union, one never sees here. How often, in my far-away Yankee home, have I laid me down at eve, with the whole earth looking so freshly green, to rise in the morning and behold the wilderness blossoming, not only like the rose, but like all other flowers besides, and glittering as if a shower of b.u.t.terflies had fallen upon it during the silent watches of the night. I have a vague idea that I ”hooked” that b.u.t.terfly comparison from somebody. If so, I beg the injured person's pardon, and he or she may have a hundred of _mine_ to pay for it.
It was at Greenwood's Rancho that the famous quartz hoax originated last winter, which so completely gulled our good miners on the river. I visited the spot, which has been excavated to some extent. The stone is very beautiful, being lined and streaked and splashed with crimson, purple, green, orange, and black. There was one large white block, veined with stripes of a magnificent blood-red color, and partly covered with a dark ma.s.s, which was the handsomest thing of the kind I ever saw. Some of the crystallizations were wonderfully perfect. I had a piece of the bed-rock given me, completely covered with natural prisms varying in size from an inch down to those not larger than the head of a pin.
Much of the immigration from across the plains, on its way to the cities below, stops here for a while to recruit. I always had a strange fancy for that nomadic way of coming to California. To lie down under starry skies, hundreds of miles from any human habitation, and to rise up on dewy mornings to pursue our way through a strange country, so wildly beautiful, seeing each day something new and wonderful, seemed to me truly enchanting. But cruel reality strips _everything_ of its rose tints. The poor women arrive looking as haggard as so many Endorian witches, burnt to the color of a hazelnut, with their hair cut short, and its gloss entirely destroyed by the alkali, whole plains of which they are compelled to cross on the way. You will hardly find a family that has not left some beloved one buried upon the plains. And they are fearful funerals, those. A person dies, and they stop just long enough to dig his grave and lay him in it as decently as circ.u.mstances will permit, and the long train hurries onward, leaving its healthy companion of yesterday, perhaps, in this boundless city of the dead. On this hazardous journey they dare not linger.
I was acquainted with a young widow of twenty, whose husband died of cholera when they were but five weeks on their journey. He was a judge in one of the Western States, and a man of some eminence in his profession. She is a pretty little creature, and all the aspirants to matrimony are candidates for her hand.
One day a party of immigrant women came into my room, which was also the parlor of the establishment. Some observation was made, which led me to inquire of one of them if her husband was with her.
”She hain't got no husband,” fairly _chuckled_ one of her companions.
”She came with _me_, and her feller died of cholera on the plains.”
At this startling and brutal announcement the poor girl herself gave a hysteric giggle, which I at first thought proceeded from heartlessness, but I was told afterwards, by the person under whose immediate protection she came out, and who was a sister of her betrothed, that the tender woman's heart received such a fearful shock at the sudden death of her lover, that for several weeks her life was despaired of.
I spent a great deal of time calling at the different encampments, for nothing enchanted me half so much as to hear about this strange exodus from the States. I never weary of listening to stories of adventures on the plains, and some of the family histories are deeply interesting.
I was acquainted with four women, all sisters or sisters-in-law, who had among them thirty-six children, the entire number of which had arrived thus far in perfect health. They could, of themselves, form quite a respectable village.
The immigration this year contained many intelligent and truly elegant persons, who, having caught the fas.h.i.+onable epidemic, had left luxurious homes in the States to come to California. Among others, there was a young gentleman of nineteen, the son of a United States Senator, who, having just graduated, felt adventurous, and determined to cross the plains. Like the rest, he arrived in a somewhat dilapidated condition, with elbows out, and a hat the very counterpart of Sam Weller' s ”gossamer ventilation,” which, if you remember, ”though _not_ a very handsome 'un to look at, was an astonis.h.i.+n' good 'un to wear!” I must confess that he became ragged clothes the best of any one I ever saw, and made me think of the picturesque beggar boys in Murillo's paintings of Spanish life.
Then there was a person who used to sing in public with Ossian Dodge.
He had a voice of remarkable purity and sweetness, which he was kind enough to permit us to hear now and then. I hardly know of what nation he claimed to be. His father was an Englishman, his mother an Italian.
He was born in Poland, and had lived nearly all his life in the United States. He was not the only musical genius that we had among us. There was a little girl at one of the tents who had taught herself to play on the accordion on the way out. She was really quite a prodigy, singing very sweetly, and accompanying herself with much skill upon the instrument.
There was another child, whom I used to go to look at as I would go to examine a picture. She had, without exception, the most beautiful face I ever saw. Even the alkali had not been able to mar the golden glory of the curls which cl.u.s.tered around that splendid little head. She had soft brown eyes, which shone from beneath their silken lashes like ”a tremulous evening star”; a mouth which made you think of a string of pearls threaded on scarlet; and a complexion of the waxen purity of the j.a.ponica, with the exception of a band of brownest freckles, which, extending from the tip of each cheek straight across the prettiest possible nose, added, I used to fancy, a new beauty to her enchanting face. She was very fond of me, and used to bring me wild cherries which her brothers had gathered for her. Many a morning I have raised my eyes from my book, startled by that vision of infant loveliness--for her step had the still grace of a snow-flake--standing in beautiful silence by my side.
But the most interesting of all my pets was a widow whom we used to call the ”long woman.” When but a few weeks on the journey, she had buried her husband, who died of cholera after about six hours' illness.
She had come on; for what else could she do? No one was willing to guide her back to her old home in the States, and when I knew her she was living under a large tree a few rods from the rancho, and sleeping at night, with all her family, in her one covered wagon. G.o.d only knows where they all stowed themselves away, for she was a modern Mrs.
Rogers, with ”nine small children and one at the breast.” Indeed, of this catechismal number the oldest was but fifteen years of age, and the youngest a nursing babe of six months. She had eight sons and one daughter. Just fancy how dreadful! Only one girl to all that boy!
People used to wonder what took me so often to her encampment, and at the interest with which I listened to what they called her stupid talk.
Certainly there was nothing poetical about the woman. Leigh Hunt's friend could not have elevated _her_ commonplace into the sublime. She was immensely tall, and had a hard, weather-beaten face, surmounted by a dreadful horn comb and a heavy twist of hay-colored hair, which, before it was cut, and its gloss all destroyed by the alkali, must, from its luxuriance, have been very handsome. But what really interested me so much in her was the dogged and determined way in which she had set that stern, wrinkled face of hers against poverty. She owned nothing in the world but her team, and yet she planned all sorts of successful ways to get food for her small, or rather large, family.
She used to wash s.h.i.+rts, and iron them on a chair, in the open air of course, and you can fancy with what success. But the gentlemen were too generous to be critical, and as they paid her three or four times as much as she asked, she acc.u.mulated quite a handsome sum in a few days.
She made me think of a long-legged very thin hen scratching for dear life to feed her never-to-be-satisfied brood. Poor woman! She told me that she was compelled to allowance _her_ young ones, and that she seldom gave them as much as they could eat at any one meal. She was worse off than the
old woman who lived in a shoe, And had so many children she didn't know what to do.
To some she gave b.u.t.ter, to some she gave bread, And to some she gave whippings, and sent them to bed.
Now, _my_ old woman had no b.u.t.ter, and very little bread; and she was so naturally economical that even whippings were sparingly administered. But, after all their privations, they were, with the exception of the eldest hope, as healthy-looking a set of ragged little wretches as ever I saw. The aforesaid ”hope” was the longest, the leanest, and the bob-sidedest specimen of a Yankee that it is possible to imagine. He wore a white face, whiter eyes, and whitest hair, and walked about looking as if existence was the merest burden and he wished somebody would have the goodness to take it off his hands. He seemed always to be in the act of yoking up a pair of oxen, and ringing every change of which the English alphabet is capable upon the one single Yankee execration, ”Darnation!” which he scattered, in all its comical varieties, upon the tow head of his young brother, a piece of chubby giggle, who was forever trying to hold up a dreadful yoke, which _wouldn't_ ”stay put,” in spite of all the efforts of those fat dirty little hands of his. The ”long woman,” mother-like, excused him by saying that he had been sick, though once, when the ”Darned fools” flew thicker than usual, she gently observed that he had forgotten that he was a child himself once. He certainly retained no trace of having enjoyed that delightful state of existence, and though one would not be so rude as to call him an old boy, yet, being always clad in a middle-aged habit, an elderly coat, and adult pantaloons, one would as little fancy him a _young_ man. Perhaps the fact of his wearing his father's wardrobe in all its unaltered amplitude might help to confuse one's ideas on the subject.
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